


we cried for mercy

by aimingarrows



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Focuses more on the Steve/Tony relationship than any action tbh, Hurt Tony Stark, Infidelity, M/M, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Presumed Dead, That is not actually unrequieted, Trauma, Unrequited Love, Written before Avengers: Endgame trailer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 15:24:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17531300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimingarrows/pseuds/aimingarrows
Summary: During the end of the world, Steve only has one thing on his mind: Tony Stark.Steve has only ever wanted Tony to give him a chance to love him. With half the universe dusted, this becomes complicated.***“I love you, I love you,I love you. Choose me when this is all over.”





	we cried for mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo I actually started writing this in the summer of 2018, intending to finish it as one long single chapter story. But I realised literally today on January 24th, 2019 that I wouldn't make it if I wasn't gonna be more motivated. So here's the first half of this story! It's not all written yet, there's a loose outline that I have written out with essential story points and key lines that will show up. 
> 
> This chapter is pretty much a precursor for the angst and love fest of the next one. Though I know Pepper survived the Snap for the purposes of this story she's dust in the wind until further notice. Also - I know Shuri apparently died but hey this was written before the Endgame trailer dropped so it is what it is.

For Steve, the end of the world begins with the sun rising over the Baltic Sea, but of course he didn’t know it at the time. He is sitting in the cockpit alone, watching the dark inky sky turn violet, and then into a pinkish hue of gold before finally melding into crystal blue.

The Quinjet is quiet, like it’s usually been for the past two years. Steve has spent so long cooped up inside the jet that the smell of stale, recycled air has started to feel like a warm, homey cocoon.

He sits alone while Sam and Nat are sleeping in their bunks at the back. Sam used to sleep heavily before. He used to hear his breathing, every inhale and exhale. Nowadays there’s nothing but silence and soft, practically indecipherable breaths. It tugs at Steve’s heart, because it’s almost as if the weight of exile has pummeled Sam down into silence. It makes Steve feel tiny. Like before.

In moments like this, however, it’s almost peaceful. Just the quiet and the expanse of blue sky ahead, and the jet gliding across the clouds.

Sometimes, when he lets his mind drift, he can pretend it’s like how it was before. He lets himself feel the phantom ghosts of those that used to occupy the empty spaces in cabin of the jet, whose names are still emblazoned on their bunks and weapons storage quarters, but have now gathered dust. A solemn reminder of who should be there, but aren’t, and Steve doesn’t know if they ever will again. Their names, etched into the fabric of the Quinjet, are somber tokens – ones that Steve will never let himself forget. They punctuate the emptiness.

“How much longer until Norway?”

Steve jolts himself out of his reverie, and tries to hide his shaky breathing from Sam behind him. It always gets to him, these daydreams of the once, the before, the used to be. And yet he seldom stops himself from falling into them. Maybe it’s his own brand of punishment.

He takes a look at the controls. “About 2 hours.”

Sam hums, then nods. There’s a beat that passes. Then two. “You eaten anything yet?”

“No,” Steve replies. “I was waiting for you and Nat to get up.”

Before, when he still lived in the Tower and the Compound, there were days when he would eat alone and stretches of time that he would spend in solitude. He was always moving, on the go, fighting in battles that seemed to never end, that he had never had time for himself. To process. To adjust. To really mull over what his life had become.

(When had war become his life?)

So Steve would take every opportunity he got to take a moment for himself. There were many times when he welcomed the solitude, yearned for it in fact, if only for the chance to reflect and mull and think over what his life had become. For a moment of peace, which after Project Rebirth had become so fleeting.

Now, he finds the solitude to be stifling. Though he finds comfort in the peace of rare quiet moments like now, he knows Sam and Nat are just around the corner. With him, though out of sight, but not out of mind.

He would give anything to turn back time and tell his younger self to savor the moments he had with his teammates, to revel in their laughter, to share their pain with them, to let them know he cared for them, was there for them, in every way he could possibly give. The time spent away has done nothing but highlight the empty spaces of where his friends should be. Hindsight hasn’t been kind to him. They always did say that distance made the heart grow fonder.

Steve misses them, all of them, so fiercely that there’s an ache in his chest that sometimes feels as though it can never be dulled.

“What’s that about me?” Nat says as she enters Steve’s field of vision.

“Cap was waiting for us to get him so we could eat,” Sam replies.

Nat purses her lips. Her face has become fraught over the years. They’ve all aged.

“You didn’t have to wait for us, you know. We don’t need to eat like you do,” she says as she rifles through their supplies.

“I like the company,” Steve replies swiftly.

She hums, her eyes scanning through their food storage compartment. “We’re running low.”

“Good thing we’ll be stopping then. What do we have?” Steve asks.

“Five sachets of oatmeal, half a bottle of powdered milk and one box of protein bars.”

Sam whistles lowly.

“Looks like we’re having a royal feast this morning boys. Hope you don’t mind bland oats.”

She and Sam set off towards the mini kitchenette installed in the case of long-haul flights, working side by side silently as they prepare for the start of the day.

It’s only a few minutes later when Sam calls him to come eat. He double checks that the jet is on autopilot before leaving the cockpit to sit with Sam and Nat. He gratefully takes the plate Sam offers him and immediately notices that his bowl has three times more food in it than the others. This isn’t new, but the pang in his chest still strikes him breathless all the same. In moments like this he becomes the liability. He hates it that he has to take more from the others, and he hates that he’s the reason why their food supplies never last long, and why Sam and Nat have to settle for less. But this has been an argument rehashed a thousand times over, so Steve just sits down and eats what they’ve made him.

They don’t chatter idly while they finish their breakfast, but Steve doesn’t mind. They’re all tired, and weary, their energy stretched thin.

When they finish Steve takes the plates and washes them while Sam sits in the cockpit and takes over manning the flight deck and controls. Nat gets to work on the intel they have about a terrorist stronghold supplied with Chitauri weapons in Tromsø.

“These weapons keep popping up,” Steve says, frustrated, after Nat has finished relaying all the information. “Syria. Lebanon. India. The Philippines. Turkey. Now Norway.”

“That’s the damn black market for you,” Nat replies, an edge of frustration tinting her voice as both she and Steve look at the map they’ve laid out in front of them. “It’s all connected.”

She moves away to the folders she’d laid out, carefully putting them away.

Steve looks back towards the map.

 _I think I’m damned_. _The fight never ends._

*** 

Tromsø is beautiful. Steve finds his fingers twitching, yearning for a pencil and a piece of paper. But he hasn’t picked those tools up for two years. He’s long replaced a pencil for a weapon.

“The cell is about 4 miles north-east from our position,” Sam says, striding up towards Steve’s side. Steve nods, and looks back at Nat who’s checking to see if their equipment is ready to go. She pulls a displeased face, her eyebrows crinkling as she tries to ignite one of her batons. Not for the first time, Steve wishes that their gear functioned properly. 

They used to, a long time ago. Before, when they had still taken it for granted, when Tony–

_Stop._

There are certain trains of thought that are too painful to bear.

“Well then,” Steve says, shifting his eyes back towards the landscape ahead of him, “let’s get to work.”

***

It takes longer than Steve expected, but they get the job done and retrieve some new intel for the next place they need to go. They destroy the weapons, so it will never be possible for another to possess them, and anonymously notify the authorities.

They take the Quinjet and fly down to Flekkefjord, a smaller city away from Tromsø, in case the authorities decide to set their sights on international war criminals after they finish dealing with black market arms traders. There, Nat pickpockets a wealthy looking lady and the three of them go to the shops to pick up some more supplies. It’s standard. Oatmeal, more powdered milk, protein bars, a few fruits and vegetables, some chocolate bars, rice and pasta. Cheap, filling foods that can keep them going for a while.

As they walk back towards the Quinjet, Steve can see Sam looking longingly at the shop windows and cafés from his peripheral. Sam had mentioned once, in a time long past, how much he had loved to travel, to see new places and try new things. Sam has seen practically the whole world by now, but Steve doesn’t think it’s quite the same thing. Exile doesn’t allow that privilege, only the detached migration from one place to the next.

The three of them make their way back to the Quinjet, stocking up their supply cabinet while Steve takes to the kitchen, making a quick batch of boiled vegetables and rice for lunch. They sit on the ramp of the Quinjet leading down to the grass below in the field they’ve landed in, and eat quietly while they stare at the glittering, clear lake in front of them.

The idea that it looks like the grounds of the Compound from the south side crosses Steve’s mind briefly.

The time passes slowly, almost at a crawl, here at a rare moment of solace.

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

*** 

The call comes after 851 days.

“Cap.”

It’s a voice he hasn’t heard in years. But it’s the wrong one.

“Bruce?” A feeling of dread spikes up in Steve’s chest, the sensation of a heavyweight tied to his heart and pulling it down, down _, down._

“Where’s Tony?” he asks, the name on his tongue sending tingles over his lips. He has seldom allowed himself the privilege of saying it, shying away from the pain and guilt it wrought within him. Perhaps he should ask where Bruce has been, if he’s been alright, it’s only the courteous thing to do.

But Tony’s not on the phone. And in a way, Steve already knows, because Tony is many things, but he is not a coward. If the world needed him, needed the team to come together, Tony would have called. The dread spirals through his body in a sick intimacy that is so great it nearly doubles him over.

“I –,” Bruce stammers, and Steve can hear him take a sharp but shaky inhale, but not of the kind born from anger when the Hulk starts to teeter on the precipice, it’s the kind of sorrow, of pain and uncertainty – of _fear._

Steve is well acquainted with the feeling of ice on his skin. It does not compare to this.

“Tony’s gone, Steve. I don’t know if he’s coming back.”

It is the worst thing Steve has ever heard.

*** 

When he is en route to Edinburgh, Nat turns on SBN on the Quinjet servers. The three of them stand in front of the screen, still and unmoving, a tension so thick and unstable that it seems as though everyone is afraid to move. Every breath Steve takes feels like he’s inhaling water, thick and frigid, it doesn’t seem real. He can hear the pounding of his heart in his ears, a staccato thrum that does nothing but remind him of the terror that waits.

He watches as a circular ship descends into New York, a large metallic vessel with bright orange lights illuminating its inner structure. It hovers ominously over the city.

Bruce’s words ring in his ears.

_Thanos is coming._

_Thor is dead._

_Tony’s gone._

“How much longer?” Steve asks tightly.

“We’re about 5 minutes out from the last known surveillance location,” Sam replies, his voice low and tense.

It is then that the image on the screen switches.

_Tony Stark Missing_

Steve doesn’t know how to describe what he feels when he reads that. He had known already of course, but seeing it articulated on the international news makes it all the more real. The words make him feel sick, the gravity of the situation sinking deep into his chest, and Steve feels like his chest cavity is caving under the weight of it. It is a somber realization as the severity of what they are facing truly dawns on him. The enormity and scale of it.

Tony is gone.

It makes him feel sick. There is a vice inside his chest, so deep that he wants to dig down and tear his chest open to give himself some relief. It’s hard to breathe, and he is afraid.

 _Together_ , he had promised Tony once.

 _I have failed you_ , Steve thinks as he tilts his head up towards the sky, to wherever Tony is now, as they glide over the clouds, the lights of Edinburgh twinkling below.

_You were right, and I failed you._

Steve glances back towards the screen, Tony’s picture and the headline now squashed against the top left corner as phone footage shows Iron Man blasting off towards the spaceship in the sky, farther and farther away until he disappears completely.

_We were meant to do this together._

*** 

The halls of the Compound feel hollow.

Everything has changed, and yet nothing has at all. It’s a contradiction that Steve finds hard to explain. The layout is the same, the furniture remains as it was. The chess set still sits on the coffee table and there is still a cereal dispenser in the kitchen. The dishwashing liquid is still on the right side of the sink.

And yet.

The building feels…dead. Heavy in a way it wasn’t before. Steve feels the presence of phantom ghosts walking the halls, but those spaces remain unfilled. Every sound is amplified, echoing in a melodic fashion that one might even call beautiful, but to Steve it does nothing but serve as a reminder of what was lost and who was left behind.

He faces off against Ross, but he does not find it difficult. He hates this man, truly, irrevocably and undeniably, and if Steve wanted to be ignorant he would even blame him for tearing his world apart. But he knows that isn’t true, not entirely. There were more forces at work than the political games that split the team apart.

“I’m not looking for forgiveness, and I’m way past asking permission,” he says steely.

“Earth just lost her best defender,” he continues, and even though the thought of it hurts like hell he doesn’t allow Ross the privilege of seeing how much it affects him, he cannot afford to give him that and break down now. Steve finds that there is very little in his life that he has meant more.

“So we’re going to fight, and if you want to stand in our way, we’ll fight you too,” Steve concludes, resolved with his fists clenched at his sides.

It’s hard, looking at Rhodey. Just like it was hard looking at Vision. The same thing happens now. Steve finds himself at a loss of what to do, what to say. He finds himself just staring, unable to move or speak until Rhodey makes the first move. What do you say to the man who lost the use of his legs because of the choices you made?

He had often mulled over the events that transpired when he was lying in his bunk on the Quinjet. About how so many of his friends had sacrificed and given up parts of themselves, either willingly or unwillingly, because he had asked or because of the decisions he had chosen to take. In protecting his best friend, he had nearly made Tony lose his.

It’s a notion that is hard to live with.

He watches as Vision and Wanda bicker with an undercurrent of premature grief and panic. It’s painful, but he finds he cannot tear his eyes away. Perhaps because it’s nearly intoxicating to watch, those two who have managed to fall in love in times where there is nothing but hate and fury, where the world is nothing but against them.

Or perhaps it’s because of a different, more selfish and personal reason. Here, those two stand at the dawn of the end of the world, where the only thing that has stood in their way for the past two years was political bureaucracy, and even that couldn’t stop them completely. That here, at the end of all things, even in the wake of the hurt and pain they had wrought upon each other, they still fell in love. There were still here, _together._ In spite of the divide that has never seemed more blatant than now.

The empty space beside him is glaring.

*** 

There is an army waiting outside the gates.

Steve fights, hard, long and _desperate_ in a way he hasn’t before. He can feel a rawness settled deep within him, and its unrelenting energy begging to be released. He is frantic, dashing back and forth and hitting as hard as he can, keeping track of everyone and everything because he cannot afford to falter, he cannot fail one more time.

He has failed Tony once, he will not do his memory a disservice in letting anyone else die because they weren’t here to do this together.

And another reason.

 _Tony is gone_ , Bruce said.

Gone, but not dead.

_I don’t know if he’s coming back._

Steve refuses to believe he is fighting like a man drowning on dry land because he is grieving.

***

There is a single, fleeting moment of peace, right after the last of the Black Order and the Outrides are taken care of.

In this infinitesimal second, Steve can only look up at the sky, at the expanse of the blue laid out before him, and wonder where Tony is, where in the universe he may be, if he’s billions upon billions of light years away from Earth. _Away from him._ The distance between them has never been more apparent than now.

It is too far, the radius of their separation.

He doesn’t even know if Tony’s alive.

He gets his answer one second after the thought passes.

(Like he said. Fleeting.)

*** 

Tony is dead.

When Thanos arrives in Wakanda, there is a green stone resting on the gauntlet, taunting in the way it shines so innocently.

Bruce had said, not even a day ago although it feels like years, that there was another stone on Earth in the possession of a doctor. The Time Stone, a bright and beautiful gleaming emerald gem.

It was this doctor that Tony had chased after, up into the stars.

Steve had always known that Tony was out there, doing his part in protecting the world – the _universe_ – in the way Earth’s best defender only could. With determination and wild, unrelenting courage and ferocity. He would not have gone down without a fight.

But Thanos is here with the stone. And Tony isn’t.

Tony is dead.

*** 

This time, Steve fights like a grieving man with a heart so broken with remorse and guilt. He holds onto Thanos’ gauntlet, his bones quivering underneath the strain of its power, and he is screaming his throat raw in anger and anguish.

He is fighting to avenge one man. He is fighting to save half the universe.

_Tony. I am so sorry._

It takes 851 days for the phone to ring, and 21 hours for the world to end.

*** 

The aftermath is quiet. Those who turned to ash have left behind a void, and silence has taken their place. It is the loudest noise that Steve has ever heard.

As he turns his gaze towards those who were left behind ( _again,_ he thinks, _why can’t we ever just be whole together?)_ he is reminded of a poem he was taught at school when he was 14. It was _The Hollow Men_ by T.S. Eliot.

He sees his broken team beside him, hollow in a way he has never seen them before, having accepted their defeat. Lost souls.

He looks towards the pile of ashes that litter the grounds they stand on, and remembers Bucky’s soft _“Steve?”_

 _This is the way the world ends,_ Steve recites in his head.

He looks down at his hands, dirt-strewn and ash-ridden.

_Not with a bang but a whimper._

*** 

“Steve?” Bruce asks quietly, sidling up next to him.

It has been three hours since the end of the world. Steve has done nothing but stare out of the window overlooking the battlegrounds, where they had convened not only five hours earlier discussing the Mind Stone with Shuri.  
  
There is glass littering the marble floors. Princess Shuri is in medical. She doesn’t know, not yet, that her brother is dead. Okoye said she should tell her. 

What do you do when you have failed so tremendously? How does one go on? What does one do next? 

Steve’s bones feel light, and his limbs feel detached from his body. Everything is a fog. He feels like he’s wading through water.

“Tony is dead,” Steve says, his voice flat.

He hears Bruce’s breath hitch. “I know.”

“He was right.”

“I know.”

Steve takes a breath, and finds it to be shaky and wet. He didn’t even know he was crying.

“Steve.” Bruce says in a voice that is so soft, somber and _sad_ that Steve finds it hard to look at him. He has never let himself falter in front of his team, he was meant to be the strong one. He was their Captain, their crutch, the one they could look to for guidance and leadership and strength whenever strength was faltering. He never did.

But this? The weight of failing one man, of half a universe, it crashes into Steve like a wave upon wave of sorrow and grief.

He finds himself taking a quick glance at Bruce, and turns away like he’s been burnt, the pity in the doctor’s eyes so apparent that Steve damn well nearly doubles under its sheer power.

He feels Bruce’s arms snake around his shoulders, drawing him in, and Steve pulls away, wiping at the tears he hadn’t known were caressing his cheeks.

“I’m fin–”

“ _No._ ” Bruce’s voice is so firm it stills Steve in his attempt to disentangle from the embrace of comfort.

“Shut up, Steve. You’re grieving. We’re all grieving. Let yourself have this. _Please._ ”

And then.  
  
Then Steve cries. 

Broken, harsh and unrelenting, he cries for those who have died, for Bucky, for Sam, for Wanda and T’Challa and Vision. He cries for those who were left behind, for Rhodey, Shuri, Okoye, Thor, himself and everyone else. He cries for half the universe. He cries for the 70 years he lost in the ice, for Peggy, for the Commandos. He cries for Howard and Maria Stark, and the secret he had buried himself under. He cries salty ice-cold tears for Siberia, and wonders if they will wash away the blood he sees on his hands every time he is reminded of the memory. He cries for the two years he spent on the run, and not using the damn phone to call Tony himself.

He cries for lost time. For remorse, guilt, and self-loathing.

He cries for Tony. A bone-deep grief and an aching loss causing a wracked sob to course his throat painfully. He feels like he’s floating, like he’s lighter, his limbs numb because a part of him is now missing.

Under the unforgiving burden that has settled over his life, he cries for mercy.

But the world is still on fire and littered with ash, and mercy doesn’t come.

*** 

If someone asked Steve who, in his years of fighting, his greatest enemy was, he wouldn’t say Hydra or Thanos.

He would say it was time.

70 years, two years of lost time. 70 years worth of people. Two years worth of reconciliation, of _together_.

A man out of time. A man, at the end of the world, who ran out of time.

A man who lost his first love to time’s merciless passage.

A man who lost his second, and greatest love to nothing else but Time.

*** 

The world has ended, but his heart still beats, and love lives on.

(Love, apparently, cannot be erased.)

*** 

17 days after the end of the world, there is a blip in the radar from somewhere outside Earth’s atmosphere.

“Is it hostile?” Rhodey asks.

The lines of his eyes have become more pronounced in the past 17 days. He looks older, more tired, they all do.

“I don’t think so,” Okoye says, her face drawn tight. “It doesn’t hold the same signature as the Outrider vessels, or the Q-ships.”

“Maybe it’ll contact us. In the meantime, keep your guard up,” Steve says.

*** 

It takes only a few hours for the ship to make its landing outside Wakanda’s protective barrier. Okoye’s has engaged what’s left of Wakanda’s defenses, and alongside the remaining Avengers they stand at the border of the barrier, weapons drawn and ready in a poor phantom mimicry of the fight that was once led by their king.

Before, when the Outrider ships had descended, Steve had felt raw and open in a desperate kind of way that only a man who’s on the cusp of losing more than everything can be. This time, though, he is tired and bone-weary. The fight, he knows, will just come automatically.

But then.

“Wait!” Rocket gasps, a frantic sound. “I know that ship!”

He breaks free from the battlefront, tearing away from the group in a fierce and roaring run. He races across the grass, screaming at Okoye to order the barrier open.

“I know them! I know them!”

Steve sees Okoye hesitate slightly, drawing in a tight breath through clenched teeth with furrowed brows, before giving the order to open the barrier.

As soon as the blue glow splits at the seams, Rocket falls through almost boneless where he’d been grasping at the gate before picking himself back up at running towards the ship.

“Quill! Quill, open the door!” Rocket screams. He pounds the ship with his tiny fists, “Come on you bastard, open the door!”

The ship hisses open, with white plumes spilling out as the ramp descends on Wakandan grounds. As soon as he can, Rocket races inside, hopping onto the slope and disappearing from few. Steve hears an exclaim of bewilderment, the words indecipherable, then something that sounds like a question, maybe a name, and then a loud, unmistakable cry of anguish.

“No, no, _no!_ ” He hears Rocket yell, with an uncharacteristic hitch accompanying his cries.

 _It’s not fair_ , Steve thinks.

Rocket’s grief reverberates across the group, and Steve hears a heavy thud, like a weight has hit the floor. A female, almost robotic voice, curses. A whimper follows. Then a tall blue woman walks out of the ship, a man slumped beside her in black tattered clothing. His head hangs forward, limp, and it would be an exaggeration to say he was carrying himself like deadweight. He’s not carrying himself at all, merely dragging his feet as he stumbles forward, leaning on the woman heavily for support as his legs start to lose their purchase and falls to the ground.

Then he hears the woman sharply whisper, “ _Stark!_ ”

_No._

Steve’s world drops from underneath him, his legs are shaking and his arms feel numb. The world turns into a haze and he doesn’t even realize he’s walking forward, stumbling across the grass to reach the woman and the fallen, crumpled man beside her. He distantly realizes there are voices behind him, asking what he’s doing, if he’s okay, and what happened. They would not have heard what he did, not without his enhanced hearing. But their voices are a fog.

He doesn’t give them the privilege of an answer, he merely staggers forward ungracefully, his chest tight. He feels like he can’t breathe, every inhale and exhale is a struggle in itself. It’s like he’s reverted back to his tiny body from 70 years ago, uncoordinated and ill.

His vision swims, turning blurry with tears, but the blue glow has always been unmistakable.

_Tony._

“Oh my god _Tony_ –” Steve gasps, his voice wrung tight and thin. He staggers gracelessly to his knees, the joints giving a flare of pain as it harshly rubs against the rock and soil. He skitters forward and damn well nearly snatches Tony off of the blue woman. He needs to touch him, needs to make sure he’s real and that this isn’t the delusion of a broken heart.

But he holds himself back at the last minute, realizing that despite his desperation, he needs to be gentle. Tony couldn’t even stand, could barely walk. It would do him no favors if Steve were to jostle him around. He hasn’t even appeared to have responded to anything happening around him.

Instead, Steve places a hand underneath Tony’s chin, and the other on the back of his head, entwining in his – _oh god blood soaked_ – hair. He gently lifts Tony’s head up and –

He’s real. He’s here. He’s awake and _alive._

And then he realizes.

Blood. Not just on the back of Tony’s head but on the contours of his face. His cheek, the bridge of his nose. A wet _squash_ emanates from where Steve had adjusted his sitting position, where he had dug his knee in further into the soil to make his grasp on Tony’s head more comfortable, and when he looks down there is a dark puddle. He traces the path of it with his eyes and sees that it’s coming from Tony himself, a wound through his stomach, leaking rivulets of dark blood.

He panics, _no no no no no._ He can hear his heart thumping against his chest.

_Tony’s here, Tony’s alive you can’t take him from me again._

As he takes stock of Tony now, he realizes his eyes are glassy and unseeing, and there is blood staining his teeth and down his lips and chin. Some of it is dry and crusted, matted in his beard.

There is no time for celebrations. No time to react other than getting Tony safe _immediately._

Someone is screaming, and it takes a second for Steve to realize that it’s him. He’s yelling for Natasha, for Okoye, for Bruce to come _here_ , contact medical and provide as much field first aid as they can in the meantime. His voice is harsh, raw and broken, the words feel like sandpaper against his throat.

He doesn’t realize that he has gathered Tony in his arms, has taken him completely from the blue woman. He has Tony’s head cradled in one hand, his arm protecting Tony’s face, while the other has snaked towards Tony’s middle, putting pressure on the stomach wound as much as possible as he bears Tony’s weight against his body. Steve only feels Tony, and it is intoxicatingly all encompassing.

They were never like this. They didn’t _do_ this. No, they did barbed words, soft smiles, gentle teasing and arguments that rained hell. They didn’t do soft, intimate touches or whispers of comfort. That had only ever been in Steve’s dreams.

Tony never knew that Steve loved him.

He has loved Tony Stark for so goddamn long.

So long, it turns out, that Steve has loved him to a time even beyond the end of the world.

***

Natasha tells him later that he had shut down as soon as he found out Tony was alive.

“The med team came,” she had said to him as they sat on the chairs outside the medbay, “and you wouldn’t let go. It was like you couldn’t even hear us.”

She looked at the side of his face, her gaze assessing and cool. “You just kept stroking the back of his head and your eyes were closed. It was like there was nothing else but you two.”

She pursed her lips. “They had to pry you off, and you just sat there like you hadn’t realized he was gone.”

A beat passed. Steve had taken a shuddering breath and said, “He has the arc again.”

“Shuri said it’s a shallow implant. It’s not to protect his heart. Apparently it houses nanoparticles.”

There is a silent beat. A heavy silence.

“I didn’t know,” Nat whispered.

“Know what?”

“That you loved him,” she replied. “I didn’t see it.”

“I didn’t let anyone see it,” Steve had said, “I couldn’t. He's in love with someone else.”

***

And that’s just the kicker isn’t it? The great love of Steve’s life loved someone else.

***

He fell in love with Tony Stark on a Wednesday, before Ultron, before Siberia, before Thanos, and everyday since he has fallen deeper and deeper.

When he let himself fall, after the barriers that had been erected between them six years ago on the Helicarrier had been destroyed, it was just so easy to be swept up in Tony’s wind.

His generosity, wit and spirit. His bravery, unparalleled. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a man who would give the world his life, even though the world hadn’t asked? Who would give everything, even at the cost of himself.

It was easy, loving Tony. But it wasn’t easy being the other man.

Not that anyone else knew that but him. But Steve knew, even though he had never acted on it or said anything, that the principle remained. Emotionally, he was a hanger-on to the couple of the century.

He could only watch as Tony and Pepper’s relationship drew on longer and longer. He bit his tongue whenever they kissed in front of him, wrapped up in their own world, and tried to ignore the pang of his heart. He excused himself from the room as much as he could, making sure he only did so a number of times lest they start to believe he was actively avoiding them. He plastered on a smile when he thought Tony and Pepper were expecting, but one that wasn’t entirely artificial. Tony deserved a family, and a child to call his own.

It just wouldn’t be with him.

_A family. Stability. The guy who wanted all that went into the ice 75 years ago._

It wasn’t entirely a lie, when he said that. Yes, a family wouldn’t be viable in the life they live. But he wanted it, desperately so. But the person he once wanted it with has been snatched away by time, and he couldn’t have the person he wanted it with now.

 _You’ll get there one day_ , Tony had told him when they were discussing a farm with Pepper, and Steve had bitten his tongue to stop himself from saying _I want it now, with you, if you’d just let me love you._

He was selfish to think that, he knew that. Didn’t shy away from it.

But sometimes there seemed to be something. There was always this charged energy with him and Tony, tainting their every interaction, whether it be explosive or gentle. There was always a fizzle of static woven in the space between them, waiting to be lit up by a fire and roar to life, if only someone would be brave enough to light the match.

Steve had pondered so much about their interactions. Charged words and loaded silences. He had driven himself nearly crazy with it, but in the end he had settled on convincing himself it was just the confirmation bias of someone who wanted there to be a romantic reciprocation.

So Steve had just settled in the back, taking what Tony would give, and telling himself that was enough.

***

Three days after Tony is admitted to hospital, he wakes up. Steve is sitting beside him as he takes a shuddering breath back to life.

Rhodey races towards Tony’s bedside. “Tones?” he asks, taking Tony’s hand and grasping it firmly between his. Steve doesn’t know what to do with his. They twitch against his lap.

There’s a murmur and a pained moan. And then–

“Rhodey?”

The man himself gives a wet laugh, nearly undone with unrestrained delight and thankfulness. It’s the happiest Rhodey has sounded in days. “It’s me, Tones. I got you. I’m here. You’re safe.”

“Where?” Tony asks, his voice still tainted by a foggy tinge as he shakes himself awake.

“Wakanda. You’re in the med bay.”

“Med bay?” Tony asks, still clearly a little perplexed from his drawn out nap, and Steve watches from the back of the room behind Rhodey as Tony takes a glance as his left hand, which is wrapped tightly in Rhodey’s fists before a desperate, broken look takes over his face.

“No, _no_ –” Tony starts in the beginning of what seems like a panic attack.

“What is it?” Rhodey asks, clearly becoming rattled at the face of Tony’s sudden distress.

“My – my _hand_ –” Tony shudders with a wet breath. “ _Peter_ ,” he wails.

And then Steve gets it. Tony’s hand – his left hand – which he had mindlessly noticed was covered in dirt when he had first held him on the Wakandan battlefield, is now clean.

Not dirt.

Ashes.

Gone down the drain.

Tony is so wrapped up in his grief – clouded by tears that Steve wishes he would never see grace Tony’s face again – that he doesn’t even notice Steve leave the room.

Steve barely makes it to the nearest toilet before he vomits down the sink.

*** 

“There was a kid. Peter. Spider-Man. He was with Tony on Titan,” Rhodey begins, his face devastated.

“Oh,” Steve says in realization. It was the kid Bruce had mentioned in the phone call, the one who helped Tony subdue the Black Order and chased the doctor down.

He remembers the news report. “They didn’t even say he was missing.”

Rhodey scoffs, clearly disgusted. “I don’t think they would’ve cared. He’s no one famous. He’s just a kid from Queens,” Rhodey shakes, “but they should care. He’s – Tony adores him. With good reason. Peter has a heart of gold. The world talked about how Tony Stark disappeared, but they never said anything about Peter Parker. It’s not fair. He was out there too, fighting to protect us. And somewhere, there’s someone waiting for him to come home, not knowing that his ashes lie billions of miles away.”

_Dust in the wind. A boy strewn across the universe._

“We won’t,” Steve says, clapping a comforting hand on Rhodey’s shoulder.

“We will remember him. And we will avenge him.”

*** 

Steve works with renewed vigor after Tony’s meltdown, Tony’s grief having snapped him out of his stagnant state. His presence, the very fact that he’s _alive_ , has reactivated something in Steve that he thought was lost.

Hope.

Tony’s here. They can do this. It isn’t over yet.

*** 

He knows Tony is still recuperating in the hospital, but Steve’s boldness at his initial shock has receded and is instead replaced by weariness. Now, after his work for the day is done and everyone else has tucked in for the night, Steve makes his way to the hospital ward, watching over Tony as he sleeps throughout the night. Everyone knows where Steve spends his nights, but he’s uncertain if they’ve shared this information with Tony himself.

He needs to work, he needs to fix this. For Tony. For Bucky. For Sam and Wanda and Peter and everyone else snapped out of existence.

That’s a big reason, but there is a part of Steve that knows he also finds solace in the nights by Tony’s side because he doesn’t want to know how Tony will react to Steve’s presence in the light of dawn. Maybe Steve is just trying to delay a volcano eruption. He knows he shouldn’t, that he’s falling into the old trap of trying to delay an inevitable discovery, and look at how that turned out last time. But sometimes fear overrides logic.

That seems to be the case a lot with him when it comes to Tony.

*** 

He’s having breakfast with Natasha and Bruce, chatting away about the day’s agenda when Tony walks in.

The stillness that falls over the room feels like a bomb on the cusp of going off.

“Tony!” Bruce exclaims, “You aren’t meant to be discharged until tomorrow.”

Bruce doesn’t know much about what happened over the past two years, but he knows enough. Steve appreciates his effort to start a conversation, to sever the wire and stop the bomb from exploding.

Steve is looking at Tony, unable to take his eyes off despite the awkwardness of the room and the sharp fizzle of fire on the invisible string that he has always felt connected him to Tony.

But Tony isn’t looking at him.

“I got tired of sitting on my ass,” Tony responds swiftly, but his voice lacks the usual playful touch. Despite mostly sleeping since he arrived in Wakanda, Tony has deep lines etched into his face, his eyebags dark and pronounced. There are flecks of grey in his hair that weren’t there the last time Steve saw him in person.

They have all gotten so old. Steve cannot help but mourn the precious time lost.

“Tony,” Steve hears himself say, the name falling from his lips unbidden.

Tony turns and looks at him. He holds Steve’s eye for a beat, then two. But it is a dead look. His brown eyes then turn away.

“Tell me what’s happening, Bruce,” Tony demands. Bruce swallows, his eyes flickering quickly between Tony and Nat, then more lingeringly between Tony and Steve. He then exhales and nods, hopping off the bench.

Both men leave the room, Bruce giving Tony updates, and the latter doesn’t spare Steve or Natasha a glance. 

*** 

It’s a few hours later when Nat finds him in the gym.

“We lost because we weren’t together, you know,” she says simply, watching him from the doorway with her arms crossed, the light from the hallway casting her into a silhouette.

Steve pauses in his punches, then resumes. “I know.”

She steps into the room further, the automatic door closing behind her. “Then you know that we can’t take back this fight if you and Tony don’t talk.”

“I’m not the one who doesn’t want to talk.”

“I know,” she says, “but for someone who’s in love with Tony I have to say you aren’t making much of an effort.”

Steve stops the punching bag as it sways back towards him, steadying it. He shudders. “He won’t even look at me.”

Nat says nothing, but her gaze remains piercing, a silent urge for him to continue. A demand for him to keep speaking and to not skitter back towards the comforting arms of silence.

“I’m scared,” Steve says finally after a few beats of stillness. “I don’t – I don’t know how to act around him. Nothing happened earlier, but maybe I was just lucky. But Nat,” Steve turns to look at her fully, his lips etched firmly downwards into a frown, “Tony and I have always been a volcano. And I’m afraid that at any moment, if I step on a live wire, we’re going to erupt. And what then? What happens then?”

Steve turns away and sighs heavily, wiping a hand over his face. “I’m tired of fighting.”

Quiet. “Who ever said you had to fight?” Nat asks softly.

“It’s how it’s always been between us.”

“Just because it’s how it’s always been doesn’t mean that’s how you have to be,” Nat replies as she takes a few steps towards Steve. She places her hand over the hand of his that’s resting on the fabric of the punching bag. She squeezes it in comfort, her eyes soft in a way that it hasn’t been in years.

“Steve,” she says firmly, “you need to talk to him. We can’t do this if you don’t. We need you both to be on the same page. Go to him. Don’t fight. I think we’ve done enough of that for a lifetime. Just talk. At least try.”

Steve’s hand spasms under hers, and she grips it tighter.

“I have always thought that love is for children. I’m giving you a chance to prove me wrong.”

He sighs again. Shivers. His heart is pumping wildly in his chest.

She’s right. He needs to do this.

“Okay.”

He told Tony once they would do this together. He won’t let go of that second chance.

***

He knocks twice, two sharp raps that belie his nervousness. There is no response from inside Tony’s assigned guest room. But Steve hasn’t said anything, so it must not be because Tony is purposely snubbing him. He knocks twice more.

Still nothing.

He would think that maybe Tony wasn’t inside, but Bruce had told him that after giving Tony the latest updates the man went to his room and hadn’t left since. Steve gnaws at his bottom lip, unsure of what to do. Does he stay and knock more, at the risk of annoying Tony? Does he ask if Tony’s alright, thereby alerting the other man to his presence and maybe even alienating himself more? Or does he just walk away?

But he promised Nat, and he promised himself. And he has walked away from Tony once before.

“Tony?” Steve calls out softly, followed by two softer knocks. “Are you alright?” He leans his head against the door, and his hearing picks up breathing from the other side of the wall.

“Tony?” He calls out again. No response. The persistent silence is making Steve worried. Tony, even if angry, almost always has something to say.

Steve takes hold of the door handle, jiggling it, and discovers that the door is unlocked. He grips it and turns the handle, but before walking in the room he takes a second to call out, “Tony, I’m coming inside, okay?”

Steve steps into the room, and the first thing that he notices is that it is dark. The blinds are shut, and there is a balled up figure underneath the covers on the bed in the center of the room. The figure, who must be Tony, is still, and could be mistaken for a statue. He doesn’t even turn to look at Steve.

The quiet and lack of action is unnerving, and it propels Steve forward. He moves slowly, light on his feet in a way that’s akin to ensuring he doesn’t scare a small animal, and directs himself so that he’s standing in front of Tony’s line of sight.

Tony is still not looking at him. In fact, it seems like Tony isn’t looking at anything at all. He has a blank look on his face, unseeing as his eyes face forward. Those beautiful brown eyes of his, usually so full of life and energy, are dull as they stare unblinkingly through Steve. It’s like Tony doesn’t even see him at all.

“Tony?” Steve asks worriedly, his stomach beginning to drop. “Tony, are you okay?”  
  
Nothing. 

In a flash of bravery born from panic, Steve reaches out to touch Tony’s shoulder. His palm lands and he gives a soft tap, hoping to nudge Tony out of whatever stupor he’s under, but Tony doesn’t give.

Oh, _no._

*** 

“He’s severely traumatized, Steve,” Bruce tells him simply, although the tenseness is his eyes cannot be ignored. “He hasn’t just survived what should have been a fatal injury but only god knows what shit he went through when he was on Titan. He’s bound to have mood swings.”

Then Bruce sighs deeply, wiping his hand heavily across his face. “But even so, it’s…disconcerting.”

“Disconcerting?” Steve asks sharply, “He’s not speaking. He’s not even moving. He’s practically catatonic.”

“So you said. Look, Steve, this isn’t my area of expertise, no matter how much everyone seems to think it is. But Tony’s my friend, so I’ll try to do what I can to help him. I’ll ask Shuri if she can give Tony a therapist. In the meantime, don’t let him be alone. I’m afraid of what he might do to himself.”

Steve’s stomach drops, but he had already known this would be a problem when he found Tony unmoving. “I think I’m the last person he would want around.”

“Cap, I only know the bare bones of what happened between you two when I was gone, but before this whole mess happened he stood in front of me in Strange’s Sanctum in New York and took that ancient flip phone I used to call you out of his pocket. Him. Tony Stark. And he had that phone with him when he was on a morning walk with Pepper. What do you think that says?”

Steve hadn’t known about that. When Bruce had called him, Steve had just assumed it was because Tony hadn’t had the phone with him. But to hear that it was in his pocket, well–

“I think you’re the first person he would want around. Always. He just doesn’t want to admit it to himself,” Bruce finishes.

He turns away from Steve and picks up a tablet, “Go to him. Keep him company. Talk to him and _don’t_ fight. He’ll have mood swings but don’t let that get to you. Just try to understand him. Let him know that someone is there.”

*** 

Rhodey is there when Steve returns.

“He’s sleeping,” Rhodey says before Steve makes it through the doorway. “Can I talk to you for a minute? Outside?”

Steve nods, angling his body so that Rhodey can pass through. He spares a quick glance at Tony’s sleeping figure on the bed before turning away, the door sliding shut against his back.

Rhodey looks stressed, the lines etched into his face more pronounced with his tenseness.

“You want to talk about Tony,” Steve states bluntly.

“Yeah,” Rhodey replies, rubbing his eyes in a telltale sign of fatigue and stress. He sniffs once, then exhales deeply before looking at Steve in the eye.

“I don’t know where to begin, Cap. I really don’t. I’m –” Rhodey’s breath hitches and arrests, not unlike the sound people make when they’re trying to hold back tears. If it was even possible, Steve’s stomach drops from rock bottom into an even deeper low. To see James Rhodes, so unwaveringly steadfast, start to crumble, is a solemn sight the likes of which Steve never realized he didn’t want to see. Even after Thanos snapped his fingers, Rhodey remained a pinnacle of decorum – a beacon of strength in the face of adversity.

Rhodey’s brown eyes are bright, “Steve. I have brought Tony back from his own levels of hell a thousand times over. I have stood by his side since before his parents died. The biggest regret I have ever had over the course of my friendship with him is that I didn’t protect him enough when his father was still alive.”

His voice trembles. “I have always been able to help him. And even when he didn’t let me, I have always tried my hardest anyway. But now,” Rhodey sniffs and his breath quivers. His voice sounds rough. “Now I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t want the biggest regret of our friendship to become _this._ I can’t fail him in this way.”

Steve feels like he’s just been allowed to hear something incredibly valuable and vulnerable. A warm spreads through his chest, as well as sick dread at the note of helplessness and despair tainting Rhodey’s voice.

But Steve wonders. “Rhodey,” he starts, incredibly softly, making sure his voice is gentle so Rhodey knows it’s an honest and open question. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I can’t get through to him, Steve. But you, you can get to him in ways no one can.”

Steve feels like he’s been punched. He’s not sure if it’s a positive response or not. “You mean because we fight.”

“Please,” Rhodey interjects quickly. “I know your history with Tony hasn’t been smooth sailing, but when the whole Accords deal happened and you all went on the run, he was devastated. He got better, he took steps to become happy again, to move on. But he still carried around that goddamn flip phone you sent him. I’m not supposed to know, he didn’t tell me, but you don’t see a phone like that on Tony Stark and not get suspicious.”

Steve is still. Rhodey breathes, steely. “My point is – Tony took steps to move on. He went on a wellness journey, he proposed to Pepper, he took Spider-Man under his wing and tried to build up what he had lost when you guys left. For all intents and purposes, and for all appearances, he moved on. But he couldn’t let go of you.”

He continues. “You are the only person that can hurt Tony as much as you did, and still hold a place in his heart.”

Steve feels like his lungs have been closed off, he’s not breathing. He’s so still Rhodey could blast him in the War Machine armour and Steve still wouldn’t move an inch.

But Rhodey’s not done yet. “And yeah, Tony has always known something was coming. In retrospect we should have paid more attention to him,” he says humorlessly. “So maybe he kept the phone along for that reason. But the fact still stands. Why keep the phone? _That_ phone? That archaic device whose data Tony could have synced into his own equipment? Into FRIDAY?”

“I– I–” Steve sputters. This is too much. All this information he hadn’t known. How much time had he spent wondering if Tony had thrown the phone away, hadn’t even read the letter, only to find out that he had kept it on his person this entire time, always within reach, even when it didn’t have to be?

“Maybe I’m reading too much into this. But the thing with a guy as larger than life as Tony is that the smallest gestures are what mean the most. Like the way he put a heater in Parker’s suit so he wouldn’t get cold swinging around in spandex in the winter. He kept that same phone on him at all times, because _you_ sent it. Because it came from _you._ It tells me he has never stopped caring about you, no matter how much you hurt him, or how much you fought.”

“I know I’ve spoken a lot,” Rhodey contemplates, “but I need you to see the point I’m trying to make. I know you and Tony have clashed, I know your relationship with him is fraught. He has had issues with you since before you two even met, courtesy of his father. You two didn’t have the best beginning. But I have fought with you, and against you both. I have never seen two people rile each other up the way you two do, but I have also never seen two men who work as well as you do when you’re on the same page. We need you on the same team.”

And finally, Rhodey answers Steve’s question.

“This is a fight that needs you both, and he needs to feel hope again. Maybe what he needs to get better is you.”

***

Steve knows one person cannot heal a broken human being. That is a fight that’s entirely dependent on the broken thing choosing to heal itself.

But maybe Steve can give Tony that strength. 

He never could back away from a fight.

*** 

Steve doesn’t know where to begin. But he can start by just being there. He chooses to spend that first night sitting beside Tony’s bed, watching Tony’s chest rise and fall in a peaceful, hypnotizing rhythm that brings Steve comfort. Evidence that Tony is here, alive and breathing, and not dead in the wide, dark and inky expanse of space. 

*** 

As he’s making breakfast the next morning, Nat comes up to him from behind.

“I hear you’re on Tony duty,” she says. 

“It’s not a duty,” Steve replies without missing a beat, chopping up the apples for the fruit platter he’s making for Tony.

“I know,” Nat states. “Yesterday you were petrified of speaking to him, and now you’re making him breakfast.”

“Things changed. He isn’t well. And Rhodey brought up…convincing points.”

Nat hums. “Yes. He told me.” A beat passes. “He isn’t wrong.”

She pins Steve with her gaze. “We were always stronger when you two got along. You have always had such a capacity for greatness. But don’t pretend you needed convincing.”

Steve pauses, the knife hovering above an apple slice. “No. I didn’t. I was always going to try and help him in whatever way I could.” 

“Because you love him.”

“ _Because_ despite everything that’s happened, Tony is my friend. I don’t know what he thinks of me, but he has never stopped being my friend.” Steve pauses, then lowers the knife down on the apple slice, creating a small score on the bright red peel, the juices flowing out. “And yes. Also because I love him.”

“Rhodey doesn’t know that you do.” 

“He has always vouched for Tony and Pepper. I don’t think he would approve.”

“And yet,” Nat says, deceivingly simply, “he still asked you to be the one to help Tony. He said that maybe what Tony needed was you.”

She steals an apple slice. “Think about what that means.”

He sighs. “I might go crazy if I do.”

“Maybe you’ve shied away from your feelings long enough. It’s time to face them, Steve. The reason we’re in this mess is partly because of secrets, and because you two wouldn’t communicate properly. This is your chance to fix that and learn.” 

She huffs a little, a not-quite humorless snort of laughter as she pops the apple slice into her mouth. To someone who knew her less, it would seem mocking. “Only you two.”

“What?”

“Only you two would need half the universe disappearing to stop fighting and start talking.”

Steve furrows his brows. “We haven’t done either of that yet.”

“No,” Nat acquiesces. “But you will.”

“What makes you so confident?”

Her eyes grow somber. “Because you’ve both lost enough, and you’re tired. And I know you both, and you won’t let Thanos get away with this.”

She pauses, in deep thought. Then she straightens. “Because at the end of the day, you have always been on the same side.”

Then she leaves, the space beside Steve growing cold as she whisks herself away from the room, almost as if she was never there at all.

Her words swim in Steve’s mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Crops can only grow when they're given water, it's the same with creative inspiration and fics. Water me!


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